A Life of Shared Ambition Charles Beale lived a life deeply intertwined with the rhythms of his family and the practicalities of the seventeenth-century art trade. Born in 1660, he was the son of Mary Beale, an English painter who became the primary provider for their household. While his mother focused on the brush and the canvas, Charles occupied himself with the essential, often unseen work that kept a professional studio functionin…